Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Thursday April 07, 2005 @01:10PM
from the time-to-patch-some-code dept.

AveryRegier writes "CNN is reporting that Congress has added an amendment to the Energy Bill to extend daylight-savings time by two months. They expect to "save the equivalent of 10,000 barrels of oil a day." How long it would take for the associated energy savings to overcome the cost to make, test, and deploy the necessary code changes? How would the cost of this change compare with Y2K? Does most date routines' reliance on GMT make this just an issue of presenting the right time to the user?"

It has been speculated, and fairly so IMHO, that Y2K was what initially drove the.com
bubble. While I certainly wouldn't discount releases of many previously classified technologies
and growth of the internet, there was a consider amount of capital put into hardware and software upgrades in the mid-to-late nineties.

Imagine what kind of capital would be required to change DST behavior on govt computers alone. We could probably convert CO2 and H2O back into
hydrocarbons cheaper.

CSC, Accenture, EDS, et al are probably salivating at the thought of such a passage of law.

Y2K drove the dot com bubble indirectly: the Fed loosened the money supply when it would ordinarily have been tightening, in order to give companies easy access to capital in case Y2K became a crisis. When Y2K passed uneventfully, the easy acces to capital became a different sort of crisis. IMO it was a risk worth taking, as the dot com bubble only destroyed my bank account, but Y2K seemed poised to destroy my ability to bank.

You know what? DST saves *for free* millions of tons of oil worldwide. Oil supplies are being depleted at an alarming rate, and so every little bit helps to conserve it. I repeat again, DST is *free energy savings*. The only thing it costs is a few days of discomfort for people like you, so I reckon it's a really small price to pay. Speaking for myself, and most people I know, the only side effect of going to summer time is being a wee tired the evening after. Perhaps you should go to bed an hour earlier that night?

Mandatory Flex-time would be good, Better yet, change the standard Business work day in the US to 4-10's instead of the current 5-8's.Having 50 or so days of commuting removed from most of the working stiffs yearly schedules would more significantly reduce energy demands.

Just go the whole hog and have car exlusionary zones! I chose to live in a place where I can cycle all year around (downtown Toronto) and my life would be easier without the cars:D

I also think the government should impose taxes on guzzlers and use them for rebates for non-guzzlers. Take an arbitrary fuel consumption number like 10 litres/100km (I'll let you calculate that in mpg), and then tax cars that can't do that. Say for each litre per 100km over that limit, there is an annual tax of 1% of the vehicle's original value. The owner of a vehicle that cost $20K new that does 12 l/100km will have to pay $400/yr extra tax. Give that as a rebate to people who chose to buy cars that do less than 5 l/100km, there aren't many at the moment [nrcan.gc.ca]. So the big three aren't willing to take any initiative and say they do what the market demands... well this will kick-start a change in the market!

These days it may not save any oil, in fact it may deplete more oil. From the Widipedia article [wikipedia.org], There is also a question whether the savings in lighting costs (people just home from work don't turn on the electric lights because there is enough sunlight through the windows) justifies the increase in summertime air conditioning costs (people home from work do turn up the air conditioning during the late-afternoon peak load times, because it's still warm outside). When air conditioning was not widely available, the change did save energy; however, air conditioning is much more widespread now than it was several decades ago.

I'm sick of springing forward and falling back! Just pick a fucking time and stick with it already! Better yet how about we ALL just start going by GMT! I'm just fine with going in to work at 14:00 if that's what it takes to get an unambiguous time when talking to people a few states or a few countries away. It really wouldn't take that long for people to get used to it and GMT's the One True Timezone anyway.

Anyway, we need to come up with a plan for energy independence. Relying on a bunch of nations who think we're Satan for our energy needs should be giving our politicians the screaming heebie-jeebies. We need an apollo-type program to come up with and implement a cohesive plan to eliminate our need for foreign oil.

I can't remember where I saw the statistic, but I remember reading that the number of accidents involving motor vehicles sharply increases the week after either DST change. Basically, on the day that people "spring forward," drivers and pedestrians are more exhausted and less likely to be reacting quickly enough. *shrug* And honestly, doesn't the "10,000 barrels of oil" sound like an exact rehash, right down to the amount, of the original DST proposal?

Y2K drove the dot com bubble indirectly: the Fed loosened the money supply when it would ordinarily have been tightening, in order to give companies easy access to capital in case Y2K became a crisis. When Y2K passed uneventfully, the easy acces to capital became a different sort of crisis. IMO it was a risk worth taking, as the dot com bubble only destroyed my bank account, but Y2K seemed poised to destroy my ability to bank

The Fed did loosen the money supply, but they did also post 9/11, and it's still ultra inexpensive to borrow, but companies aren't because they lack faith that they'll be able to pay back loans based upon exected revenue forecasts (geez, I'm a geek, why do I know this stuff?, oh, right, I love econ:) anyway, fear of Y2K drove spending, because fear of being stranded was more compelling than fear they couldn't pay back any loans.

The thing that pisses me off is people going "oh, Y2K, nothing freaking happened.". Nothing freaking happened BECAUSE people like me spent a year poring over 20-year-old code in minute detail and at great expense! To consider all that expenditure a "waste of money" because "nothing happened" really pisses me off, like saying "what's the point of paying for seatbelts, when I was driving and dinked that lampost wearing one, I didn't even get a concussion!"

I wish I had a link, but I recall that the DoD did an experiment for y2k. They used the software fix as an opportunity to replace some only mainframes with newer hardware and software. Then they let these 3 old machines run through the end of the year, unpatched.

I sense a need for my Mad Googling Skills. LordPixie, to the rescue !!

After wasting the last 15 minutes of my life. (OK. Fine. My employer's time/money.) I have determined that this little story is not apocryphal bullshit !

For example, see this [garynorth.com] little site. It not only covers the anecdote you mentioned, but also includes a link to a (now defunct) CNN article. Further references can be found by simply googling for Koskinen "three computers" [google.com].

I would also like to take this opportunity to point out that LordPixie usually charges for the services of his Madcap Googling Skills. This time was free. =)

Imagine what kind of capital would be required to change DST behavior on govt computers alone.

I submit that the vast number of programs out there are going to rely on the OS for TZ information, instead of trying to calculate DST themselves. Especially given the patchwork nature of DST in the US.

So, 1 OS update later, and most programs will 'just work' with a longer DST. (Yes, some highly specialized programs will need updating)

I submit that the vast number of programs out there are going to rely on the OS for TZ information, instead of trying to calculate DST themselves. Especially given the patchwork nature of DST in the US.

OS will likely account for much of it, but every damn computer will have to be thoroughly checked to be sure. You know how it is, right?

I once worked in the logistics industry (fancy name for transportation of goods anywhere on a schedule) and we had huge tables of locations and had to indicate whether they were or were not subject to DST. IIRC Indiana has some bizarreness, where Arizona uniformly doesn't do DST. It's an example and I don't know how many others in transportation, telecommunications, etc would have similar concerns. But they have to first be certain whether they will or will not be affected then test the patch, so it's still a bit Y2K-like.

Report to Conference Room C.
You will be seated in the comfy chair and be forced to endure what initially appears to be a finite PowerPoint presentation, but you will eventually realize is a Kafka-esque random crapflooder.It is loaded with current buzzwords about some n-tier solution, somehow integrating all 621 languages on 99 bottles [99-bottles-of-beer.net], which project will become your life, assuming you scream in the proper musical sequence from a certain Partridge Family episode, which will turn off the presentation and unlock the door.
Good luck.

Here's a PDF of the amendment [house.gov], as agreed, from the house.gov page on the session yesterday [house.gov].
Realistically, if it'll make that big of an impact, why not make Daylight Savings Time a year-round proposal? If this amendment is passed by the House, we will have a period of a little over 3 months annually (Dec, Jan, Feb) in which DST is not in effect. That seems ridiculous.
Not to mention that if DST becomes year-round, the change in software becomes a static offset to GMT as opposed to figuring out when the annual switch days are. Even Windows allows you to set a time zone that ignores DST, so a company in permanent CDT would only need set their time zone to EST and not worry about changing the clocks again.

I've long felt that this should be the case. The modern workday favors it. Honestly, who cares if it's a bit darker when you go to work. When you go home, wouldn't it be nice to have it be light outside?

There's so much talk about SAD (seasonal attitude disorder, or whatever they're calling it these days), and all of America seems to be on antidepressants. How much of that would be eliminated if people could drive home in the daylight?

Especially this year, since the changeover, the change in my mood has been dramatic, and I even find myself unintentionally working a little later just because it's still so bright outside. I can't see how permanent DST could possibly be a bad thing.

We can't do that! Changing DST to be year-around would be an economic disaster!! The drug companies Anti-depressant Sales (A-D's are the #1 prescription drug in the USA) are required to meet Wall Street's expectations or the stock crashes. If Wal-Mart and CVS (the store not the software package) don't sell as many prescriptions they don't make as many mega-millions and their stock goes down. And so on and so on until we have a dammed economic crash all because the goofballs in Congress wanted to get in 18 holes after work instead of 9!:)

"Congress passed the first DST law in 1918 and repealed it the next year. Franklin Delano Roosevelt imposed year-round DST for three years during the Second World War. In 1966, Congress approved a uniform DST standard for the whole country. In the 1970s, Richard Nixon had the nation go on DST for 15 consecutive months in order to conserve energy. The last president to modify DST was Ronald Reagan, who advanced DST's start date to the first Sunday in April."

"As Michael Downing points out in his new book, Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time, urban businessmen were a major force behind the adoption of DST in the United States. They thought daylight would encourage workers to go shopping on their way home. They also tried to make a case for agriculture, though they didn't bother to consult any actual farmers. One pamphlet argued that DST would benefit the men and women who worked the land because "most farm products are better when gathered with dew on. They are firmer, crisper, than if the sun has dried the dew off." At least that was the claim of the Boston Chamber of Commerce, chaired by department-store magnate A. Lincoln Filene."

"We're also informed that DST helps conserve energy, apparently because people arriving home when the sun is still up don't switch on their lights. Didn't it occur to anybody that maybe they compensate by switching them on earlier in the morning? Moreover, people who arrive home from work an hour earlier during the hot summer months are probably more prone to turning up their air conditioners. According to Downing, the petroleum industry once was "an ardent and generous supporter" of DST because it believed people would hop in their cars and drive for pleasure -- and guzzle more gas.

But the very worst thing about DST is that it's bad for your health. According to Stanley Coren, a sleep expert at the University of British Columbia, the number of traffic accidents and fatal industrial mishaps increase on the Monday after we spring forward. The reason, presumably, is because losing even a single hour of sleep over the weekend makes a lot of people a bit drowsier on what we might usefully call Black Monday. Unfortunately, there's no compensating effect of a super-safe Monday as we go off DST and "fall back" in the autumn."

Now, if those schools would get real and start school after 8:00 like reasonable people, we could get around this little problem and be much more flexable with the time.

I don't remember the exact times and dates, because I was in 1st grade or 2nd grade, but in about 1974 they had Daylight Savings Time in the winter because of the energy crisis. My school started after 8 a.m., but we were getting on the bus before daylight so after a couple weeks they just cut the first hour of the school day so we went in at 9. Missed half a year of science because of it. Maybe that's why I'm so stupid today.

The current proposal is a joke, really, it is expected to save 00.05% of U.S. daily oil usage for two months a year. We need to concentrate on changes that would actually, you know, make a difference.

Permanent DST was considered in the 1980's during the oil crisis. The problem is that some children would be walking to school in the dark in the winter months. I don't remember if some were actually hit by cars or not, but it was this concern that killed the idea.

Somehow children in Canada and Scandinavia make it to school, too. Kids waiting for the bus in the dark wouldn't bother anyone living reasonably far north, but it'd be a hell of a talking point for overprotective mothers from New Jersey to Oregon.

A lot of people have responded to your post with a variety of reasons on why not to go to a permanent time. All my life I have lived in Saskatchewan (just north of Montana and North Dakota). We do not change times, and are one of the few places in North America that doesn't. Usually every spring there's talk about it and without fail, the government decides to just leave things alone.

Yes, this means that children to go to school when its dark. No, this typically does not mean that more are getting hit by cars. Farmers typically don't start work at a given time, they start with the dawn and finish when its to dark to see properly. The only reason they worry about the time is when they need parts to continue harvest/seeding/etc. Most parts places around here are starting to have extended hours during the seeding and harvest seasons.

It does cause a little confusion at times. Most of our TV channels will start an hour earlier/later. If you're doing business outside of the province you have to be aware of the local time.

Personally, I love the fact that regardless of the time of year, I can say that we are GMT -6. When a story gets posted that mentions an ecllipse or meteor shower, I can quickly determine the best viewing times from almost any summary.

Most farmers like DST so they don't need to get up so early in order to get chores done.

Dairy farmers need to milk the cows at the same time every day. Cows don't really care what the clock says the time is. Cows are very much creatures of habit, as herd creatures tend to be; they like routine, and they hate change. If you milk cows even an hour late, they will kick, bellow, and generally be a pain to deal with, and they won't give as much milk. Eventually, they'll get used to the new schedule, and then they'll fight just as hard if you try to change it back.

Changing the cows' daily routine twice a year is not something a wise dairy farmer would try to do: it's just easier to get up an hour earlier or later, and ignore the "official" time, in favour of true consistancy. After all, what's the real difference between 5:30 and 4:30 am, anyway?

And if farmers can do it, I don't know why other businessmen can't: how hard is it to schedule your employees to optimize for daylight? They already need to schedule to optimize for other business expenses; what's one more?

It's not like daylight savings time saves daylight: it just adjusts the clock, to pretend daylight is during "working hours", which we're of course free to change anyway. Why not just set $WORKING_HOURS to what we really want, and stop tampering with the clocks?

Most farmers like DST so they don't need to get up so early in order to get chores done.

I've heard this arguement before but I've never really understood it. It's not like the cows know what time it is. IMHO farmers will get up when there is enough light to get done whatever needs doing. This whole thing sounds a lot like "get the stereo that goes up to 11 caus it's louder".

Farmers hold a decent bit of lobbying power, moreso than one would expect by chance. They complain about DST one way or another. Most farmers like DST so they don't need to get up so early in order to get chores done. My grandfather didn't really care; he just got up when it was light out, regardless of time.

Indiana still doesn't do DST (due to the farm lobby), but, IIRC, they're trying to work it through their legislature. Whenever I go to my mom's in the summer I always laugh at them because the sun rises around 5 a.m. in June / July.

According to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], most farmers actually hate DST (as others have mentioned). And the reason that Indiana doesn't do the whole DST thing has more to do with the fact that the state is divided between time zones as it is.

But hey, if you want to blame the guys that grow the food you eat, go ahead.

There is (should be) a study dated 1998 (which I was not able to locate yet) sponsored by the EU Commission which states that daylight saving time does not have the desired effect on energy consumption (which is taken as a common fact anyway here (de)). I wonder why the US should differ - anyone any idea?

While European nations have been taking advantage of the time change for decades, in 1996 the European Union (EU) standardized an EU-wide "summertime period." The EU version of Daylight Saving Time runs from the last Sunday in March through the last Sunday in October. During the summer, Russia's clocks are two hours ahead of standard time. For example, Moscow standard time (UTC+3) is about a half-hour ahead of local mean time (UTC+2:30); this is about the s

Wouldn't it be much less complicated to just drop DST altogether, and make the work day an hour earlier? Instead of working from 9 to 5, work from 8 to 4 and voilà, you have an extra hour of daylight in the evening.

This would not be anything like Y2K. The code to change the time for Daylight Savings Time is already there. This is just a change in the data. Plus, it is generally only the OS that needs to be changed. The only real problem would be embedded electronics.

Living on the eastern edge of a time zone, I would love for DST to be extended.

In every embedded system I have worked on, we always dealt with time in UTC or ticks from a predefined epoch. Presenting local time to a human was always up to the system communicating with the embedded system, as was converting time to UTC or ticks for sending to the embedded system.

The problem with standard time in the summer is that the sun rises before anybody is up (like 4 AM) and some daylight in the morning is just wasted. Daylight savings time moves dawn back to 5 AM and gives you an extra hour of daylight in the evening.

You probably see where I'm going with this: who in their right mind is actually awake at 5 AM to enjoy the daylight?????

Daylight savings time should move the day another five hours or so. Imagine if the sun were just coming up as I started thinking about getting out of bed by 10. At 11 or so it would have fully roused me and I could get up and enjoy the full day. At 2 or 3 in the morning the sun would be setting just as I was starting to grow weary of my hacking and start thinking about going to bed. I -- along with most other similarly minded geeks -- would be ever so much more productive.

Of course some of you might complain about the extra screen glare, claim that you don't get any natural light in your basement anyway, or state that you just plain dislike that burning yellow eye in the sky.

Studies have shown that most hackers work better at night, and actually use dawn as a kind of alarm clock "oh shit, suns coming up, better get my head down or I'll never get to work by 9" (I KNOW i'm not the only one who has thought that)

why doesn't congress stop tapdancing around the real issue, and instead pass some well-thought out legislation to reduce wasteful energy use, implement a rational gasoline use tax, and other things that would actually address the real problem? Hm?

I agree that we need to encourage energy conservation. It'd ridiculous that nearly every day when I leave my office, 80% or more of the lights in the building are on. When I come back in the morning, those SAME lights are STILL ON. I've tried turning them off, only to find that the cleaning people turn them on and then never turn them off.

I know my case isn't unique. Even late at night on weekends, one only needs to glance to the side of the freeway to see the rows of highrise buildings all aglow in artifical light. I can't believe that many people are putting in such long hours. It's as if energy has 0 cost, financially and environmentally. Maybe if taxes were increased it would encourage businesses to be more thrifty with regards to energy uses.

Technically, we *all* pay for gas, in at least two ways. One is the environmental cost, since lower fuel efficiency means higher emissions. And two is the increase in demand which causes all gas prices to increase, not just the gas prices for people who drive SUVs.

Maybe that's an idea in itself - only increase gas taxes on people who drive fuel-inefficient vehicles.

Unfortunately, because we use gas tax to pay for the roads, we're going the other direction. Oregon, for example, is taxing hybrid cars because they don't use enough gas to pay for their share of road use.

That would be a completely reasonable argument, if gas prices weren't so damn low. The US severely under-taxes gasoline, effectively subsidizing the use of petrol-burning vehicles.

(By "under-taxes", I mean that the current amount of tax collected in the US on gasoline, though it does vary from state to state, barely covers the cost of maintaining roadways, in the best cases. It does not cover the costs of associated damage to the commons resulting from dumping burnt hydrocarbons and various chemicals into the air, nor the damage resulting from spills associated with maintaining the infrastructure to produce and deliver the volume of petrol we use, nor the cost of maintaining sufficient access to world-wide sources of oil reserves so that we can continue burning oil for such uses. I would grudgingly, if not happily, pay more taxes on gasoline so long as (a) everyone did it and (b) the additional funds went *only* to mitigate the costs associated with gasoline usage.)

quoted from: http://www.anr.state.vt.us/reflect/may1401.htm [state.vt.us]
"Your dad or grandpa probably taught you that you'd save electricity, or at least save money, by leaving fluorescent lights on for extended periods of time rather than turning them off and then back on.
That may have been true once, but not any more. The following, borrowed from Kansas City Power and Light, answers the question: Should I turn off fluorescent lights when I don't need them, or is it more energy-efficient to leave them on in an empty room?
Fluorescent lighting was developed in the 1940s when electricity costs were low. Design and manufacturing compromises in these early lamps caused them to burn out more quickly if switched on and off daily. Consequently, many companies left their fluorescent lamps on day and night. The electricity consumed -- given the extremely low power rates at that time -- actually cost less than the labor and material needed for lamp replacement.
Much has changed during the past half century in the world of lighting. Technology advancements and increased electricity cost have prompted the lighting industry to rethink the conventional wisdom of fluorescent lighting system's operation.
Many people continue to believe that it takes significantly more electricity to turn on a fluorescent lamp than to operate the lamp for long periods. Modern fluorescent lamps, however, use little starting energy. Turning them off actually helps them last longer and lowers lighting energy costs. Researchers at the U.S. Naval Civil Engineering Laboratory have found that a fluorescent lamp's initial "start surge" lasts only 1/120 of a second. The entire starting current for two-tube rapid-start luminaries lasts less than one second before it stabilizes. Consequently, Navy engineers assert that turning the lamps off for only one second saves the energy required to turn them back on.
A standard fluorescent lamp can run for 34,000 hours if left on 24 hours a day, 365 days per year. This equals 3.9 years of round-the-clock use. However, by turning the lamp off for 12 hours a day, it increases the overall longevity of the lamp to 6.8 years.
Not only does turning off fluorescent lights reduce lamp replacement costs, it also reduces electric bills. For example turning off a single one-tube light for only one-half hour a day can save about $3 in energy over the life of the lamp. In fact, the money saved by this routine is typically more than the price of a new lamp.
In short, you should turn off lights in your office or a room in your home when you leave, even if you leave for only a few minutes.
For more detailed information and additional data about fluorescent light use, visit the Kansas City Power and Light website at http://lighting.bki.com/pubs/bull4.asp?link=kcpl [bki.com]
Article posted for the week of May 14, 2001."

I don't have the information necessary to make an observation regarding the net energy savings if any exists, but as a resident of Pennsylvania which runs from Lattitude 39 43' N to 42 N I would sure welcome the extra daylight.

I gotta say that driving to work in the dark and driving home from work in the dark is not a prticularly gratifying experience. In fact it's downright depressing.

Interestingly enough the times have been changed in the fairly recent past (according to the US Army [army.mil]:

During the "energy crisis" years, Congress enacted earlier starting dates for daylight time. In 1974, daylight time began on 6 January and in 1975 it began on 23 February. After those two years the starting date reverted back to the last Sunday in April. In 1986, a law was passed permanently shifting the starting date of daylight time to the first Sunday in April, beginning in 1987. The ending date of daylight time has not been subject to such changes, and has remained the last Sunday in October.

Let me try and get this straight. We'd save 10,000 barrels a day. We use 20 million.

This is a savings of 1/20th of a percent. And I'm not able to make out if that savings ONLY exists for those 2 months or the year round. Not particuarly impressive either way.

Here's an idea. Let's start passing legislation and using incentives to promote recycling, efficiency, and alternate sources of energy. You know, going to the heart of the problem as opposed to screwing around with something that presents piddly savings and smells more like a publicity stunt.

this is the way you want to save energy? a saving of 10 000 barrels / day? if you look out on the streets, do all the people that drive SUVs need to drive them? this is an argument that also apply for eupoe, but goes double for the us. tax the hell out of fuel guzzling monster cars (almost the same size as monster trucks) and lower the tax waaay down on cars like VW Polo, MB Smart and hybrids. this also deal with a lot of other problems like parking. some snowy staes might be a little m ore lean on the tax, like snowy states. But theres no need for an Suv in LA, NY, Paris or Oslo.

If you "tax the hell out of fuel guzzling monster cars," then you are skipping taxation of older fuel guzzling cars that are not as efficient as the newest SUVs.

If you tax gasoline more, you increase the burden on everyone, including poor people that cannot afford to buy a new gas-efficient car. You increase the cost of all goods that are shipped anywhere, or the cost of services that rely on those goods or shipping services.

And where does the tax money go? Does it fund research on alternative fuel sources? No, it is spent on pork barrel projects by Congress.

As/if oil gets scarce, the price will go up naturally, and the market forces will dictate people drive more efficient cars or alternatively-fueled cars.

Artificial taxes on things only screw everything else up, with no actual benefits. Its just a political game.

10,000 barrels of oil a day certainly sounds like a lot if you're planning to put it in my back yard, but exactly what percentage is it. Is it just a drop in the proverbial oil bucket. I imagine so. How would it compare to having cars get one extra mile per gallon?

The average American drives 8000 miles per year [usf.edu] (I think car owners drive 17,000 mi/year, so this average includes non-drivers)
Let's say the average car gets 28 mpg [sierraclub.org]
The US has 296M [census.gov] people.
Each barrel of oil yeilds about 20 gallons of fuel [roshd.ir].
So we have 8,000 miles/year * (1/28) gallons/mile = 285 gallons used by each American per year, or 285/20 = 14.25 barrels per year.

14.25 * 256M = 3.648 billion barrels used by cars in the US per year.

Now the same calculation getting 29 mpg, we get 3.531 billion barrels used, saving us 117 million barrels of oil per year, or 320,500 barrels per day.

"The more daylight we have, the less electricity we use," said Markey, who cited Transportation Department estimates that showed the two-month extension would save the equivalent of 10,000 barrels of oil a day.

Apparently they're also going to change how the Earth tilts on its axis. The weather doesn't care what time of day it is.

As a panel programmer (among other things) for a security company, this would be a major pain in the butt. All of our security panels (and I would assume most others) have built-in DST changing abilities.

Having to reprogram each of our panels to change at a different time would be extremely time-consuming for a small company like mine. I don't even want to imagine what bigger companies would have to go through.

The security field is very time-dependant. One hour could mean having the police called thinking someone is trying to break in or having your premise completely unsecured.

I, for one, hope this change does not get approved. At least Y2K had the possibility of not causing problems. This will definitely cause problems.

Why not abolish it?Seriously, Daylight Savings is the biggest PITA. Either half of your company is late to work or half of them are early and won't get paid for that hour they're sitting around. Then they stand around talking to those of us who are on work on time, wasting our productivity.

Why not just do away with DST completely, and by congressional mandate, require all businesses (banks, stores, employers, etc.) shift their hours back one hour? Requiring such a shift by legislative means is no worse than DST, and it need only happen once.

As far as staying on DST and dropping the shift back to Standard Time, that is one thing that I cannot allow. Noon was traditionally the moment when the sun was directly over the longitude of the observer. With Standard Time, this was quantized in order to create a manageable time system -- this is a perfectly acceptable optimization which was necessary for an interconnected civilization.

Admittedly, we do not directly depend on sunlight as much as in times past, however arbitrarily redefining "noon" to mean "1:00 'PM'" is completely preposterous. Why not just go all the way to metric time while we're at it? (Has the Swatch patent expired yet?)

With the whole 2000 versus 2001 thing, I can let mathematics slide a little due to the sociological significance of changing four digits at once. Declaring that we use the wrong time in perpetuity? That would be the real life analogue of the urban legend about redefining "pi" as equal to the integer value "3".

Daylight Savings Time is one of the most idiotic concepts we have around today. I cannot believe that people actually signed on to the concept of arbitrarily moving clocks around twice a year. If I were around when this idea first started, I would have mocked those people mercilessly.

Several places do not observe Daylight Savings Time at all. In the United States, the entire state of Arizona stays at GMT -7 all year 'round. Funny, I don't read news story about how many more kids are killed from walking to school in the dark in Arizona, how much more energy that state uses relative to the others, or how much more depressed Arizonans are than people in other states! Parts of Indiana are the same way.

Congress needs to repeal everything that has to do with Daylight Savings Time and pass a law prohibiting it (to keep states from doing it themselves). If companies care about when it's daylight, let them adjust their hours accordingly. My company already does that in the summer, even WITH Daylight Savings Time.

If you don't like when the sun comes up and goes down, too bad. Complain to God for making it that way. I don't like having to get up and leave my house before dawn to go to work. The way I see it, at least I have nature and thousands of years of human history on my side.

I wonder how much productivity is lost each year at the beginning of DST because of people forgetting to dink around with their clocks? Or as is most likely the case, people CLAIMING to forget? It's the one day a year when everyone has an automatic excuse for being late to work and everyone's bosses say, "Oh yeah, that's understandable." About half my office showed up late.

Nice reference to the redefinition of pi, by the way. It certainly does apply here. And I really like your thoughts about how DST redefines arbitrarily what noon means. I hadn't thought about that, but it makes a LOT of sense. And to the other poster, making a law mandating when businesses open and close IS kind of silly. I think that is the parent's point--it's less silly than the concept of Daylight Savings Time, yet we still foolishly screw around with our clocks twice a year.

This article focuses on all the bad side effects of switching Daylight Saving Time, but there can be some benefits too.

For example, changing Daylight Saving Time could prevent terrorist attacks:

In September 1999, the Palestinian West Bank was on daylight saving time while Israel had just switched back to standard time. West Bank Palestinians prepared time bombs and smuggled them to Arab Israelis, who misunderstood the time on the bombs. As the bombs were being planted, they exploded--one hour too early--killing three terrorists instead of two busloads of people, the intended victims. (from webexhibits.org [webexhibits.org])

Why move the time we can just adjust our mindset? If we want to have more daylight hours then change our work starting times or when businesses open. Instead of an average 8am to 5pm work date, switch to to 6am to 3pm - the military already does this.

The sun doesnt give us more daylight hours just because we reference time differently.

Answering the original question, I work in the power industry as a developer. I can watch the local load curve and do a bit of my own research about supposed "energy savings" by artificially making the sun set later in the day. BoooOogus. The savings would be low.

You all know this: The devil is in the details. The programming impact would be larger than anticipated. Power is usually tracking in "hour ending" and various participants use a 23 and 25-hour day when necessary, defined as "relative hour of the day". Because of this, date conversions abound and the the "first sunday in april/last sunday in october" algorithm is in quite a few places. The impact would be high.

I think it's political hot air. Why not just ask people to pay more for oil? The markets know how to react.

As an Arizonan first and a programmer second, I think history is going to look back on DST as essentially equivalent to the (anecdotal) story of lawmakers legislating pi to 3.

Arizona doesn't do DST. I've only visited areas that observed daylight savings time, and it never ceases to amuse me. The conversations usually go like this:Q. Why do you keep changing your clocks around?A. To get more daylight!Q. So changing your clock alters the rotation or axial tilt of the Earth?A. No, see, normally it would get dark at 7. Now it gets dark at 8!Q. But the sun doesn't rise until 8 or 9 AM. When you need to make your blanket longer, do you cut a foot off one end and sew it onto the other?A. But...*gzert*...more daylight! More daylight!Q. Why don't you just wake up an hour earlier, if you want more daylight?A. *gzert* *pop*

(Okay, they don't actually short circuit, but they tend to run out of coherent arguments. It seems most people haven't really thought about this.)

Add to this my programmer's view of time (as a monotonically increasing quantity [relativity aside] unrelated to human foibles) and this seems a lot like Congress trying to legislate the tides, or apply our IP laws in Norway.

Q. But the sun doesn't rise until 8 or 9 AM. When you need to make your blanket longer, do you cut a foot off one end and sew it onto the other?

Nonsense. In the summer months, the sun rises earlier (and sets later too), so getting up earlier makes perfect sense, because the day DOES get longer. A blanket obviously doesn't get longer, so it's a lowsy analogy.

Q. Why don't you just wake up an hour earlier, if you want more daylight?

Because just being awake doesn't cut it... You need stores to open earlier, your own work schedule to start an hour earlier, etc. Changing all clocks is by far the easiest way to change everything.

The fact that most people haven't spent hours of their lives pondering the reason we have DST, doesn't have anything to do with the validity of the idea.

I hear Congress is meddling with Daylight Savings Time - Leave it alone!

The real issue is for the Federal Gov't to realize that our Foreign Oil
dependance is a National Security threat as well as an Economic one. We
need a Federal program similar to putting a man on the moon to harness
alternative fuel technologies. Only the public sector can drive the
research against the vested interests. It would create jobs, increase
security, and be a new technology that the USA can export to the rest of
the world.

Extending Daylight Savings Time by 2 months will break computers (like
Y2K) because new 'Timezone' rules will need to be programmed into every
computer that manipulates dates. The estimated savings is 10,000 barrels a
day when we use 20 million! What a short-sighted idea that totally misses
the big picture.

Yeah, no kidding. Here in good ol' backwards indiana, we don't use it, and it seems to work fine. There's a bill in our state legislature to change that, though-- the given reason being that it's hurting our state businesses because people can't figure out what time to phone here from other states.

My vote is for eliminating it altogether. While I'm dreaming-- if we can slow the earth down to, say, 25 hours a day, that would be super, too.

Not even all parts of the United States follow it uniformly. From webexhibits.org:

" is NOT observed in Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, most of the Eastern Time Zone portion of the State of Indiana, and the state of Arizona (not the Navajo Indian Reservation, which does observe). Navajo Nation participates in the Daylight Saving Time policy, due to its large size and location in three states."

Err... Highest percentage of the problem is the military, not Social Security.... The military has a retirement program on top of just social security

Er, hate to say it but it's not Military either. Highest percentage is the "Department of Health and Human Services" [kowaldesign.com] (643.9 billion), followed by "Social Security Administration" (583.5 billion), "Department of Defense"+"Department of Veterans Services" (475.4+68.3=543.7 billion), "Department of the Treasury" (441.2 billion). Also, that military retirement program is just like any other pension plan people recieve. It also comes out of the "Department of Defense" budget.